We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Continue' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

Women in Science

Careers beyond academic science

Interview excerpt: For a while Lois became disillusioned with the NHS. She did a diploma in nutritional medicine and then worked in the corporate world giving talks based on what she had learnt during the diploma.

You worked part time after the first baby?

Yes.

Did you continue working part time after you’d had the second one?

Well I handed my notice in and didn’t go back [to the job in the NHS] so I then did something completely different and went and did a diploma in nutritional medicine.

Oh.

‘Cos it was something that I was really interested in.

Yes. Why did you do that?

I wanted to do something that I wanted to do and I had become very disillusioned with the NHS and the treadmill really, and wanted to look at other things that I might do that might be outside of the NHS. And so I did that. I worked a little bit in the, Oh what do you call it? Not commercial world, what’s the, you know big organisations, there’s a word for it, ‘The Corporate World.’ I worked in the ‘Corporate World’ and gave talks about nutrition and healthy living and all that sort of thing, based on the, the academic side that I’d been doing for the diploma. And although I enjoyed that, what I found was that the locum work that I did in emergency medicine in order that I didn’t have to give my maternity leave money back I was really actually enjoying those days.

Uhuh.

Actually probably more than the other days and I realised that although there was lots about the NHS that I didn’t enjoy there was an awful lot about it that I had taken for granted, that actually stepping outside it made me realise what I was missing. So you know the camaraderie and the teamwork, the sense of achievement that you get from looking after somebody who’s acutely unwell, I had missed all of that. So I decided that I would come back but I would be careful about not taking on too much and I then worked in a different department from the one that I worked in, which you know was very different.

Was this still at A&E?

Yeah so this was still A&E.

Right.

But I then worked in Oxford, which is where I trained and it was, it was a lot better.